McKillen to be questioned in court over alleged links with Blair

PROPERTY DEVELOPER Paddy McKillen will be questioned next week about allegations that he has a “long-standing business relationship” with former British prime minister Tony Blair, the High Court in London has been told.

Mr McKillen will return on Thursday and Friday of next week to give more evidence in his case against the billionaire Barclay brothers and other parties, including financier Derek Quinlan and the National Asset Management Agency.

The Belfast-born property developer alleges that he was improperly blocked from buying Mr Quinlan’s shares that would have given him majority control in a company owning three luxury London hotels.

Kenneth Maclean QC, representing the Barclay brothers’ companies, said that the McKillen side had provided “unsatisfactory disclosure” up to now about Mr McKillen’s relationship with Tony Blair Associates.

He said: “I do not want to waste your Lordships time with the unsatisfactory response we have received from the other side in relation to the nature of the relationship, other than to propose that I take it up with Mr McKillen when he comes to give evidence next week.”

The interest in Mr Blair centres on a belief held by some of the parties in the case that his consultancy company played a role in brokering links between Mr McKillen and Qatari investors interested in Coroin, the holding company that owns the Berkeley, the Connaught and Claridge’s hotels.

During his evidence yesterday, Mr Quinlan’s associate, Gerry Murphy, repeatedly rejected allegations from Mr McKillen’s barrister, Philip Marshall, that Mr Quinlan agreed in January 2011 to sell his stake in the company to the Barclays.

Mr Murphy insisted that Mr Quinlan had paid over £3 million to a Barclay company, Ellerman, in interest charges on Mr Quinlan’s debts that the Barclays had bought last year from the National Asset Management Agency and Bank of Scotland Ireland.

However, Ellerman had never laid down a payment schedule, Mr Murphy, who began working with Mr Quinlan in 2009, accepted. “We have had no formal request to pay the interest and I do not know how Ellerman tabulated the interest charges,” he said.

The decision of Mr Quinlan in January 2011 to pull out at the last minute from a deal with a group of Qatari investors showed he had agreed a deal with the Barclays, Mr Marshall repeatedly insisted yesterday.

Up to now, it has been known that Mr Quinlan received a £500,000 loan from the Barclays in late 2010; while his wife, Siobhan, received two payments of £500,000 each into her Lloyds Private Banking account in Grosvenor Street in London during 2011.

However, Mr Marshall, in his cross-examination, indicated that a number of other payments had been received during that time, but he did not give details of them in open court.

Denying that he or Mr Quinlan had not kept Nama properly informed, Mr Murphy said it held a charge over less than half of Mr Quinlan’s share in Coroin.

“They had 13 per cent. But they were behaving like they controlled 100 per cent. Other creditors controlled 22 per cent. I could not take instruction solely from Nama,” Mr Murphy replied.

He said it would have been “a nonsense” for Mr Quinlan not to have supported the Barclays after they bought Misland, a company owned by the Dublin-based Green family.

However, he said he had acted to counteract declarations made in January 2011 by the Barclays that they were “in control” of Coroin, quoting comments that he made to The Irish Times on January 29th that Mr Quinlan still owned his holding.

Mr McKillen will be the last witness to give evidence in the case, but closing speeches by lawyers will not be finished until nearly the end of the month.